Monday, October 31, 2011

I am not part of the problem, proud to be 3,553,227,618!

In case you're wondering what your number is you can check here."The Number" is how many people were estimated to be on the planet when you arrived.

Your date of birth.

For me I just squeaked under the estimated range where humans, with all of our glorious machines, dependency on oil, modern agriculture and commercial fishing practices were in balance with the planet.

Any damage 3 plus billion people did was absorbed by our planets great biomes.

Our oceans could sustain us, there was enough wildlife to go around, habitat could rebuild.

Hooray for me.

That means all my fellow 1968 brethren are in a secure place knowing that the ecological problems the planet faces now at 7 billion people are not our problem.

We're not the ones wrecking the planet people.

Gorillas vanishing in the Goma? Not our problem.

Bluefin tuna going extinct? Not our problem.

Amazon rainforest's being burned? N.O.P

These are issues for "the others," anyone born after 1968 who have been using up our precious resources like they had something to prove. You know, the roughly 3.5 billion extra mouths, the extra users of oil, those damn Bluefin tuna eating nouveau riche types who have been cramping our style since 1969.

The great problems of our planet can be squarely placed on the wide, corpulent, and resource hogging shoulders of those extra 3.5 billion who are wrecking the place with abandon.

Where's the fence? I mean shouldn't we have erected some sort of fence?

The only good news here is that I don't have to lift a finger to right the ecological wrongs the other 3.5 billion of us are perpetrating on this fine planet of ours. I was born with a "planet bank" the unwritten understanding that this planet would always provide for me no matter what my footprint was on it.

All of that has changed and will change again as we pass 7 billion and in a few years reach 9.

My suggestion?

A planetary pyramid scheme. "The others," those 3.5 billion who came after me, can get busy with the global solutions to restoring the planet back, and you better save my Bluefin dammit because that's one tasty fish.

For labor? They can tap the next 2 billion of us who are scheduled to arrive by 2040, and what a labor force, 2 extra billion workers who can move mountains or replace them as needs be.

In summation I am proud to be 3,553,227,618, or lucky, as the numbers go because I will be dead and gone by the time 10 billion of us discover that there really are no resources left, and the planet has gone about as far as it can to provide for a population that should have stopped in 1968.